Hockey Talk: Philadelphia

11/26/2014

Welcome to the first installment of "Where are they now?" It's not very often that a professional athlete can spend his entire career with one team. In today's column we will look a player who spent his entire ten year playing career with our beloved Flyers. We are talking about the one and only Jimmy Watson.

Watson was the 39th overall pick in the 1972 NHL draft. He would play in four games in the 1972-1973 season recording one assist. The following season saw him make the roster and the rest, as they say, is history.

During his playing career he scored 38 regular season goals and 186 points in 613 games. The most impressive stat however is his career +295 rating. He would add an additional 11 playoff goals and 37 playoff points. At the end of the 1981-1982 season, Watson would hang up his skates for good in the NHL.

Since retiring, he has stayed local to the Philadelphia area. He currently is the Director of Ice Works Youth Hockey program located at Ice Works Ice Arena in Aston, Pa. He coaches the Delco Phantoms Midget 18-U AA team. He also runs the Jimmy Watson Hockey Academy and Jimmy Watson Hockey Camps, both located at Ice Works.

NHL:

ScottLaughton remains with the big club. He was elected to shoot first in the shootout loss against the Islanders last night. He has been getting minutes on the 2nd line with VincentLecavalier and RJUmberger as well as some quality penalty killing time.

AHL:

After a thrilling shutout victory on Friday night, the Phantoms were right back on the ice at the PPL Center Saturday night against the St. John’s Ice Caps. This was another low scoring affair, with the Phantoms dropping the decision in overtime. PetrStraka scored the lone goal for LehighValley, with ZackStortini and BrandonManning picking up the helpers.

RobZepp stopped 24 of the 26 shots he faced in over 63 minutes of ice time in the loss.

The Phantoms will play tomorrow night on Thanksgiving Eve to conclude their home stand against the Springfield Falcons.

ECHL:

The ReadingRoyals dropped their game Friday night, but picked up a sweep of the two-game set vs. Indianapolis. Winning two close games by scores of 4-3 and 2-1. They trailed 3-0 in Saturday’s game before sparking a huge comeback victory with 4 goals in the 3rd period.

The 8-5-1 Royals will face the Elmira Jackals on Wednesday night before hosting Greenville for 2 games this weekend.

Ryan Gilbert is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia and can be found on Twitter @RiskyBryzness.

After looking at the penalty kill last week, I wanted to flip that and look at the positive aspect of the Philadelphia Flyers’ special teams: the power play. The Flyers power play has been great as of late, not only this season but in past seasons as well. However, the departure of ScottHartnell and injury to KimmoTimonen left question marks for 2 of the 5 positions on the top unit. Fortunately, BraydenSchenn and MarkStreit have filled in quite nicely along with the mainstays of ClaudeGiroux, JakubVoracek and WayneSimmonds.

All charts in this column will have this season's stats in orange, last season's in black.

This season, through 19 games, the Flyers man advantage has done much better than last season’s already good numbers. They have scored on 23.53% of attempts after 19 games, compared to 13.89% last season. So far this season the unit has only been under 20% after 4 games, last season the unit was only over 20% for 2 games. There is no doubt that the power play has been one of the keys to the Flyers’ success this year.

Like with the penalty kill, I looked at the team as a whole, then as pieces. First, I looked at the corsi for attempts per 60 minutes. For those who aren’t familiar with this stat, corsi combines all shots on goal with all missed shots and blocked shots.

As you can see the Flyers are putting nearly 15 more pucks towards the net per 60 minutes. Some of this can be attributed to the new point-man, MarkStreit who is known more for his shooting while Timonen was known for his passing. Moreover, ClaudeGiroux and JakubVoracek have been shooting more from the outside. Last season the Flyers were 7th in this category with just under 104 corsi attempts per 60 minutes. This year the Flyers have jumped up to 2nd in the league with just under 116 corsi attempts per 60 minutes.

Getting pucks at the net is important, and it leads directly to pucks going into the net.

After scoring a very respectable 7.18 goals per 60 minutes last season, the Flyers have even topped that this season with 8.32 goals per 60 minutes. This can be attributed to the breakout year the JakubVoracek is having along with the hot start of WayneSimmonds and really the whole top unit.

The Flyers power play all starts at the top, with MarkStreit this year, and KimmoTimonen last year.

KimmoTimonen was fantastic at the point last year, and MarkStreit has done his best to fill in for him this season. Timonen scored just over 4 points per 60 minutes last year, and Streit is just behind that at 3.3 points per 60. Streit surprisingly has no power play goals on the year, and just 4 assists. I would fully expect these numbers to remain at this level if not go even higher.

From the point, the puck usually either goes to the net or to one of the players on the outside, in this case ClaudeGiroux and JakubVoracek.

Giroux and even moreso Voracek have been a huge reason for the Flyers success thus far. After putting up 7.35 points per 60 on the power play last season, Giroux has improved that number by more than 1, up to 8.42 points per 60. Even more impressive are Voracek's numbers, whose 5.18 points per 60 last season have jumped up nearly 2 whole points, from 5.18 to 7.17. To go along with this, Voracek had a hand in 56% of power play goals scored last season when he was on the ice, this season that has jumped up to 72%. That's right, Voracek has had a point on nearly 3 of every 4 goals scored by the top power play unit.

Its not a usual occurrence to score from the outside without some distractions in front. WayneSimmonds has done spectacular yet again in his role there, and BraydenSchenn has filled in nicely for ScottHartnell as mentioned previously.

WayneSimmonds has become one of the best, if not the best, power play net front presences in the league. After scoring 5.22 points per 60 minutes on the power play last season, he has had a stellar 2014 campaign with nearly 7 points per 60 minutes on the man advantage. Schenn has done respectable as well with nearly identical numbers to Hartnell. Hartnell, who scored 4.44 points per 60, was viewed by the key to the power play by some, but Schenn has beaten him by a nose here, scoring 4.54 points per 60 minutes from the same spot.

It’s really no surprise that Giroux and Voracek are leading the way for the Flyers on the power play. They have done it all this season from even strength domination, to penalty killing by Giroux to becoming one of the most feared duos in the league. While these numbers might seem a bit inflated, I wouldn’t be shocked to see them remain this high for most of the season. The Flyers top unit really is something special and has the potential to carry this team.

Ryan Gilbert is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia and can be found on Twitter @RiskyBryzness